Asymmetric pumping of topological non-Hermitian photonic lattice without inversion symmetry

Non-Hermitian effect in topological photonic lattices reveals some unexpected phenomenons. Here, we establish a model of non-Hermitian extended Su-Schrieffer-Heeger (SSH) lattices with complex long-range hoppings, which is implemented on a curved-arranged waveguide array platform. Upon injection of the field into the waveguide array, asymmetric pumping is observed between two edge waveguides. Specifically, our results demonstrate that the non-Hermitian terms play a major role in the topological protection of asymmetric propagation in photonic lattices because of broken inversion symmetry theoretically. Our finding could provide a new platform for quantum information processing and exploring topological effects in the non-Hermitian system.